


Fic: "How do you like your blue-eyed boys?" (Minerva/Albus, Minerva/Lucius)

by eldritcher



Series: The Minerva Quartet [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Wartime, Wartime Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 02:42:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2371511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritcher/pseuds/eldritcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Minerva can tell you all about what it is like being surrounded by madmen at every turn and twist in life. She is sick of them all, but what the Castle claims it keeps and Minerva knows that well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fic: "How do you like your blue-eyed boys?" (Minerva/Albus, Minerva/Lucius)

Warning: this piece turned out super-crazy. Also, it's sort of wedged between the other pieces (The Prometheus Triptych, Eldritch, Thy Kingdom Come, The Fairy, Gyves etc). So I don't know if it'll make sense on its own, even if I think it's supposed to.  
  
 **Warnings for the story: Character death, sexual content, grave-robbing  
  
** Disclaimer: I own nothing here. This wasn't written to make any profits. 

* * *

**How do you like your blue-eyed boys?**

When Voldemort's body falls limp and lifeless to the ground, dispatched by his fate-destined assassin who had been trained by lies and omission by two of the greatest actors she has known, she realises that it is over.

She takes a deep breath and bellows, "Damn you, Albus! Damn you, Severus!"

And she laughs, cursing them for their brilliance, and for their callousness; her posture is still upright and unwavering, despite her aching bones and many wounds, because she is Minerva  
McGonagall and Minerva McGonagall does not bend or bow before anything or anyone.

She strides forward, grim-faced and gritted jaws, to examine the corpse of the selfish, foolish, cold-hearted bastard. For good measure, she prods the corpse's side with a dusty boot and mutters, "How do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mister Death?"

Potter, always solicitous to her, now gently takes her arm and asks, "Professor?"

It amazes her that he can utter such commonplace words as the name of her profession after such a momentous occasion. She puts aside her amazement and tells him calmly, "e. e. cummings."

Potter looks as if he does not have a clue in the world about what she is going on about. She does not blame him. She is fairly sure that she does not understand what she is raving on about.

"We must go and fetch Professor Snape's body," Potter says, all determination and regret.

She laughs again. Potter throws another worried glance at her before returning his gaze to the corpse at their feet.

"I am all right, Potter," she says. She is. She really is. "I will be in the Headmaster's office. Fetch the body..." _but, Minerva, a body is only a chain tethering our mind._ "I can arrange for it to be placed in state."

She does not tell him she still believes that if she ascends the circular staircase, the door will open for her and a phoenix will chime a note of welcome and she will have to slip into her role of negotiator as two too clever men squabbled over wine and scones. He sets off for his task.

She pokes the corpse at her feet once more and then laughs once more. She is not turning into Bellatrix. She really is not. It is only that she remembers once catching a sleeping Tom Riddle curled in the moonbeams on one of the bay windows in the Charms classroom, a slender book of poetry slipping from his thin fingers. A Muggle poetry book. _Tulips and Chimneys_ by e. e. cummings.

* * *

When she goes up the circular staircase and into the office she detests so much of late, she is caught unawares by the sight of them embracing and laughing, seeming to have lost none of their colours and quirks despite being portraits. They break apart when they see her, smiles still gloriously incandescent on their faces.

"I hope you are still smiling when I prepare your body to be buried," she says with all the bitterness she can muster at their deception, which must be quite an amount, if the way the two of them paled at her words is any indication.

"Minerva, it was the only way," says Albus, all blue-eyed, earnest and captivating as he had been for every damn moment of his life.

"Minerva, I am so sorry," says Severus, his dark eyes pained and sad.

She thinks of what he must have been through in the last year. Molly had once said that it was easier to forgive a son than a husband. Minerva has had neither a husband nor a son in her long life, but she likes to cast in those roles these two men who had deceived her so. She Conjures drapes over Albus's portrait and then glares at the other painting, willing the younger man to say anything at all just so that she could grant him the same fate. She does not think she has it in her to forgive them.

"Minerva-" he says, looking as stricken as he had when she had cornered him in this office months ago following his appointment as Headmaster.

The door opens then. Potter brings in the body.

"Professor Snape!" Potter says looking at the portrait, and his voice is brimming with regrets and reverence and respect and pain.

"Well done, my boy," Severus says quietly and lets Potter weep over the portrait frame without a word of reproach.

Minerva leaves them to it and arranges the corpse in state. For the first time in many months, she is thankful that she is alive. Severus, so robbed of dignity in life, would at least keep that dignity in death, since she is the one to attend to his corpse. Then she thinks of how she would have to bury him beside Albus. She regrets being alive.

"Minerva-" Severus calls her softly. Potter is still kneeling before the portrait and crying.

She turns from the corpse to fix him with a glare.

"If you can, if it is possible, if there aren't any hassles-"

"Spit it out," she commands him. She wishes that she had been there to see him shuffling from foot to foot and as nervous as he seems now when he had been all of ten years old and begging for candy. She wishes that he is alive just so that she could tell him this and make him uncomfortable.

"Can you bury me in the Malfoy estate?" he asks, his voice not containing a shred of hope.

She decides that she has put up with that tone of voice enough in life. She would not put up with it after his death too. So she says curtly, "If that is what you want. They owe you a lot."

She wishes that she could say she did not understand the request. Unfortunately, she understands. Abraxas Malfoy and Albus Dumbledore had been the closest things to a father Severus had known. She knows that Severus has not forgiven Albus. So he wished to be buried beside Abraxas.

"Near the eastern fences," he murmurs, looking down at the ragged boy weeping. "In a field of wild bluebells. Harry, you must leave and partake in the celebrations. We did not go to all this trouble for you to fold up and impersonate a Victorian maiden."

Potter laughs and runs trembling fingers through his hair. Then he gets to his feet unsteadily and moves towards the door, carefully avoiding looking at the corpse placed in state in a bier Minerva has conjured.

"What about Voldemort's corpse?" Potter asks, with a hand on the door-knob. "Shall I incinerate it?"

"No!" Severus says sharply. "Bury him with me."

Minerva looks at him incredulously, as does Potter.

Severus opens his arms in a helpless gesture and explains, "He was raised a Catholic."

Potter, no doubt willing to move sky and earth for Severus, says softly, "I can bury him in a graveyard, then. Or even at his father's house. I will not be burying him next to you, Sir. That would be a sacrilege."

* * *

Grave-robbing as a hobby is not something Minerva has contemplated. That might be why she throws a heavy paper-weight at Lucius Malfoy's head when he presents his request. She is not entirely sure why she deigns to even allow him audience in the Headmaster's office. She tells herself that it is not because of the way Severus in the portrait seems genuinely happy each time Malfoy visits. Malfoy himself seems more interested in chatting with Severus than in taking up any of her time. So she finds it hard to begrudge Severus these visits from the slimy popinjay.

"Tell me, once again, why you feel it necessary for me to assist you in a spot of grave-robbing?" she asks him calmly, even as he rubs his bruised cheekbone that had suffered from her paper-weight lobbing.

Severus is conspicuously absent from his portrait.

Malfoy throws a glare at the empty frame before facing Minerva again.

"He had made a will of sorts back in 1976, shortly after my father's death." Malfoy shrugs. "I found it in the Lestranges' vault." He extracts a yellowing scroll from his coat and hands it over to her.

In a script that is very familiar to her, are written the words,

" _...and when he's plucked such mysteries as men do not conceive - let ocean grow again._ If I were to fall, I would fall beside him. _"_

"This mentions nothing of his wishes for his interment, Malfoy," she says. It does not.

He looks at her pensively.

She remembers her brother's death and the urn of ashes gifted by his murderer. She remembers Albus's broken body beneath a tower and the man who had desecrated his tomb. She remembers Severus's blood-drained corpse and the monster who had commanded a snake to kill him.

"I have been asked to account for my...allegiance by many people. Not just the Ministry and the public," he says quietly, "but also my wife and son. I find myself without answers. What can I tell them? That he was not like this before my father's death? That he was not as insane before his fall in 1981? It would not have been true, for he had murdered and made Horcruxes long before either of those events. But-" he glares at the empty frame once again before continuing, "Riddle was Dumbledore's mistake as much as it was Riddle's own. The old man cannot make amends now. Riddle cannot make amends now. It falls to me, as my father's heir, and to you, as Dumbledore's spouse, to make sure that we do right by them."

She looks at him properly for the first time in many months. His hairline is receding and his features are cavernous. There are bags underneath his eyes and lines furrowing his face. He has aged, rapidly. She has heard from the gossip mill that Malfoy had been distressed both by Severus's death and Narcissa's departure for Rheims. She considers Malfoy a peacock-like git incapable of anything but posturing and false bravado, and she is unable to imagine him affected the way she is, the way normal folk are, by partings of dear ones without the chance to say farewell.

She thinks of his silly argument and says, "I was not Dumbledore's spouse."

She had not been, in any sense of the word. The only person who could claim that had been imprisoned by Albus in a Hungarian fortress and had been murdered by the monster on whose behalf Malfoy is currently trying to persuade her into a spot of grave-robbing.

He frowns at her words before saying, "Forgive me, I had simply assumed so from how Severus spoke of you." He clears his throat and gives me a chagrined look before saying, "And Riddle called you Dumbledore's bird. He could be rather crude at times."

Strange, now that the spectre has been banished into a pile of rotting dust and bone, Malfoy finds the courage to call his former master by his given name.

And Riddle had always treated her with thrice-darned courtesy, as if mocking her gently for every failure in her life. She remembers him, the last time they had met, running his damned yew wand down her wrinkled cheek, shortly after he had appointed Severus Headmaster and come along to see how matters progressed, and then dismissing the Carrows's pleas to have sport with her, saying in a pensive, soft voice, "You need not fear, Miss McGonagall. Where you are concerned, even at my most monstrous, I cannot exceed in cruelty than Dumbledore. _I'd rather from one bird learn how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance._ But Dumbledore was not me, was he? He preferred the stars to the bird." He had offered her a bow then and said, "Your part in this tale is over, my bird. Fly away and leave this cage, won't you?"

Riddle had not called her Dumbledore's bird to be crude. He had simply been referring to that verse from the cummings poem.

Minerva exhales deeply and looks at the drapes that hide her from the portrait of Albus. Half a century or so of servitude to Albus in thrall of the love she bears him, and the only one who had noticed had been an insane Dark Lord. This, Minerva laments, is her luck. Whoever said that Gryffindors possessed a great deal of dumb luck had not certainly factored her into their calculations.

Riddle had, in his own way, tried to warn her about where Albus's heart truly remained. When the gossip-mills had caught wind of her affaire d'amour with Albus, some of her friends had been disgusted ( _he was your teacher_ ), some alarmed ( _he is so old_ ) and some overjoyed ( _you cannot do better than him_ ). The only person who had seemed to understand the sordid truth had been a monster with a passion for e. e. cummings.

Minerva embarks on her first tryst with grave-robbing.

Lucius Malfoy is not half as suave a criminal as he postures himself to be. He is so affected by grave-robbing and needs two baths, three glasses of fine brandy and four hours before his words resemble anything approaching coherence. Minerva puts the time to good use, indulging her curiosity about the Manor and poking her nose into things she is fairly sure she ought not to be poking the appendage into.

When Malfoy arrives after his ablutions, he asks the House-Elves for tea and then pours her fine elderberry tea with a dash of milk and two sugars, just as she likes it. When she looks at him suspiciously, he shrugs and blames Severus. She will have to have words with Severus. She might be susceptible to grave-robbing with the right amount of persuasion, but she draws the line at having her tea preferences broadcasted to all and sundry.

Malfoy fidgets, attempts to make small talk, fails and fidgets again. She observes him. She has detested him for the entirety of their acquaintance. She has valid reasons too, ranging from his willingness to plant bloodthirsty diaries on little girls to his cowardice.

"I will return in a moment," he says and leaves her with her tea. She takes a scone, bites into it and the sickly sweet taste lingers on her tongue reminding her of a twinkling, blue-eyed man she is yet to forgive.

Malfoy returns and deposits a gilded portfolio in her lap. She throws him an upbraiding glare for his gall before gingerly opening the portfolio. Sketches. Pages and pages of sketches on fine quality parchment drawn by a gangly, ugly, unlovable child who had grown into a sullen, ugly, unlovable man. She remembers finding eleven-year-old Severus sketching a caricature of her, all stern primness and unlovely features, in a Transfiguration class. She remembers taking points from him and scolding him, unkindly, not because of the severity of the offence, but because of the epiphany ( _I am as drab as Madam Pince and I had once promised myself I would never be so_ ) his frank sketch had stirred in her.

When she prepares to leave, she tucks the portfolio under her arm and dares Malfoy to demand its return. He does not.

Perhaps he considers it payment for services rendered. She does not care.

She takes it to Hogwarts with her, goes to the deserted Astronomy Tower, now no longer a haven for lovebirds, and then examines the sketches. When she finds one that depicts Albus stirring her tea for her and looking at her with the fondest of expressions on his gnarled face, she loses her composure and tears the sketch violently, and feeds the pieces to the snarling wind, then tries to Summon them all back, and fails, and falls to her knees beside the railing, only to close her eyes and imagine the men on either side of a burst of killing green, and she cries for them both though she does not forgive them.

Minerva sends Potter a bundle of sketches that depict Lily Evans. Potter turns up and demands to see the rest. Minerva obliges him and they pore over the sketches together despite Severus's vocal protests. Potter touches each sketch with reverence, softly, as if afraid to disturb the essence of the man who had drawn it, and when he chokes back a sob on seeing a caricature of himself, triumphant and grinning, holding aloft an egg stolen from a dragon's nest, Minerva realises that martyrdom-inspired hero-worship has turned into something else.

" _Dear me, dear me, Miss McGonagall, hero-worship has turned into something else, hasn't it?"_ Riddle had asked her that in a gently mocking tone in 1957.

Potter becomes Harry in her mind after that. They begin to meet every Friday to go over sketches and quietly reminisce.

* * *

The years go slowly for Minerva. The faces she sees daily are now missing. In their places are younger men and women. She feels her age in her bones during the winters. She feels her age in her heart when she sees these newcomers in seats that were once occupied by men and women who seemed fixtures in her life.

Trelawney retires and joins a circus. She tells Minerva that she has always wanted to be a gypsy. Minerva hopes that gypsies have more fondness for sherry and incense than she does.

Filius retires to Cheshire where he promptly hires a pretty Veela maid to teach him the fiddle. Minerva does not like to imagine the lessons, especially since Filius has no ear for music.

Horace dies in his sleep. Minerva was the executor of his will and discovered that it had been updated thrice during his lifetime. The first instance was in 1937, when he had made it in favour of an orphan boy he held precious. The second was in 1973, when he had changed it in favour of an ugly, snivelling creature whom its own mother might have found difficult to love. The third and final instance was in 1998, when he had changed it in favour of setting up a trust fund for orphans enrolled in Hogwarts.

* * *

Severus and Malfoy have a fight. It does not involve shouting or cursing. But Minerva knows it from their frigid politeness to each other and their absent-mindedness as they stew over the argument. She asks Severus what it is about. He mutters something about idiots with over-cooked brains. She is not curious enough to ask Malfoy what it is about.

Harry comes on Fridays, bringing silly tales of his shenanigans as an Auror, and they settle down to studying the sketches. Once, he says that Minerva is the only one who does not ask him pointed questions about marriage.

"I don't need to, Harry," she says kindly. "It is fine. It is."

He fixes her with a perceptive look, glances at the draped portrait of Albus once again, and then murmurs, "I suppose you know what it is like."

* * *

"I swear, the children are turning increasingly moronic over the years," Severus complains after listening to Minerva give a couple of rule-breakers a harsh dressing-down. "How do you put up with it?"

"Since the both of you have buggered off and left me to it, I will thank you kindly to keep your noses out of my business," she says, not without bitterness. She thinks that she will never lose the bitterness.

He shuts up then.

Harry becomes increasingly reckless in seeking out danger. Kingsley Shacklebolt advises him, Arthur Weasley reprimands him, Molly shouts at him and Ginerva, still in love with him though she is married to Zacharias Smith and a mother of two, pleads with him.

"Why don't you take a position here?" Minerva asks him during one of their Friday meetings. "The Charms post is open for next year."

"I would rather die at wand-point in an alley than return here!" he exclaims, horrified at the very thought.

She does not blame him. She often wishes for the same. Riddle had said she was free after Dumbledore's death. He had not known about how deeply the chains of her heart ran.

Severus shoves his way into their conversation proclaiming, "I did not spend two decades of my life in hell just so that you could fritter away your hide so!"

Harry looks at him and says softly, "So be it, then."

Minerva watches Harry caging himself just as she had done half a century ago. She knows he is trapped for life, just as she is. The castle does not yield its prisoners easily, or at all.

Severus looks subtly pleased with Harry's acquiescence. It strikes her then how alike Albus he could be, shamelessly wielding words to maximum effect and believing whole-heartedly in his own righteousness. She should not be surprised by this, she tells herself. Aberforth Dumbledore had warned her more than once about his brother and the young turncoat protégé.

Hermione Weasley writes a novel about Albus. _Lemon Drop_ becomes a best-seller and Minerva receives Howlers ( _she was the wicked seductress who came between Grindelwald and Dumbledore_ )and condolences ( _she was the wronged wife_ ).

She is disappointed in Hermione, but she does not take umbrage as she might have once upon a time.

Harry apologises to her. She waves it off and tells him that it is not his fault, because it is not.

Whispers follow her in the hallways. Her students eye her with disgust and prurient fascination. _Witch Weekly_ runs an exclusive on her.

* * *

Malfoy, after one of his chats with Severus, stops by Minerva's desk, clears his throat pompously and says, "You will be the object of fascination only until the next Quidditch match-fixing scandal."

She thinks it is his insincere way of saying, "Chin up, old girl."

She gives him a disbelieving glare and returns to her paperwork. He throws his hands into the air, as extravagant in gestures as ever, says, "Dash it all!" and bends to grab her by the nape of her neck, tilts his head and proceeds to kiss her with finesse. She punches him in the crotch, watches in satisfaction as he hops about howling, draws her wand and advances on him.

"I hope it is not an interest to experience firsthand my earth-shaking skills at fellatio," she says.

He looks at her as if she has lost her mind.

"Witch-Weekly," she says tersely.

He cups his crotch protectively, takes a wary step away from her, glares at Severus who is rolling over with laughter, and then tells her, "I don't read it. That magazine employs the most horrendous hairstylist to write a column."

She lowers her wand. It is the only invitation she feels inclined to give. It is enough for him to creep closer and snatch another kiss from her. She notices that he has angled his crotch away from her. She gives him ten points for his excellent survival instinct.

* * *

Malfoy is all grace and finesse where Albus had been overwhelming and unbridled. Minerva is glad for the difference. He half-drags, half-pushes her through the Floo into a large, empty bedroom. He seats her on the bed, falls to his knees and gently pries her boots off. She can see the white dome of his balding head from her position and it grounds her. He dives underneath her prim black dress, finds his way through the maze of her petticoats and applies his lips to the core of her, eagerly coaxing moans and whines from her lips. After leaving her limp and exhausted, he rises to his feet and begins shucking his clothes off. She manages to spell her clothes off and settles beside him on the large bed. He places her hand on him, but she shakes her head in disagreement and straddles him instead. He looks uncertain, so she kisses his concerns away and slides onto him. He lets her set the pace, runs his fingers down her flanks, occasionally reaches up with effort to kiss her and watches her with languorously droopy eyes as she does the work. She is old, he is not young and she is sure that they make an incongruous sight. She looks down at where they are joined and sees the faint, liquid sheen of his saliva where he had applied his mouth earlier. Sighing, in contentment, she carries them over the edge and he grunts in approval of this satisfactory conclusion to the proceedings.

He does not throw her out of his bed, the way Albus used to. Nor does he become taciturn in the wake of intercourse. He does not even bother to clean them up. Instead, he nuzzles into her neck and falls asleep. He talks in his sleep, of course, and Minerva stays up all night looking at him. She grows restless by dawn. So she slips on his discarded shirt (something she had always wanted to try, and had never found the opportunity to while with Albus) and walks barefoot in the deserted corridors in the empty Manor. The portraits of Malfoys ancient seem scandalised at her. She regrets that they are being subjected to the naked arse of a woman well past her prime instead of Narcissa's shapely posterior, but she is feeling too savage a victory in this indulgence and continues gleefully on.

At the end of the corridor is a circular chamber, empty and unfurnished but for one portrait that occupies the pride of place. She gravitates towards it, her mind still on the pleasures of the previous night.

"Dear me, Miss McGonagall, dear me," murmurs the young, grey-eyed man in the portrait, his sharp cheekbones tinted with a flush as he tries not to look at her naked legs.

She stares at the painting, horrified that Malfoy has not destroyed it, and wryly amused that every turn in her life seemed to hold only the same madmen again and again. A warm pair of hands slip over her waist and her nose is assaulted by pungent morning-breath as Malfoy murmurs, "Come back to bed. It is too early."

She decides not to worry about Malfoy's poor taste in portraits and lets him chivvy her back to bed, whereupon he proceeds to demonstrate to her the many uses of his skilled, _skilled_ tongue.

She thinks that she could get used to this as long as he does not attempt conversation.

* * *

Later, that afternoon, during her weekly tea with Harry, she cannot keep a smug smile off her lips. Severus keeps whistling lewd ditties and relents only when she threatens him with drapes. Harry is looking at her fondly. She wonders if he knows, or if he suspects. She does not care.

Dilys Derwent bursts into her portrait just as Minerva is about to pour herself another cup of tea and announces that Lucius Malfoy has been just admitted to St. Mungo's.

Minerva's teacup shatters in her fingers. Harry heals her hand, grabs her arm and shoves her through the Floo to St. Mungo's. He drags her up to the reception desk, makes use of his fame and gets them an audience with a senior Healer.

"Too late," the healer says apologetically. "He was dead when he was brought in."

"How?" she chokes out.

"Burns." The healer winces. "Never seen something as bad. He rigged up the Manor with Dark curses, flied around the place on a broomstick and poured kerosene from the air for good measure, went inside and barricaded himself in before setting the place to fire. We were too late and found only the charred remnants of his body. We are not even sure if it is his body."

* * *

Minerva is the executor of Malfoy's will. She looks down from the hastily constructed stage in the grounds of the demolished Manor that looms behind her as a carnivorous skeleton, and cringes upon seeing the horde of journalists and Ministry busybodies who are keen to know what will happen to the Malfoy fortune.

Narcissa is seated between Harry and Draco in the front row, armed with a stiff upper-lip and black mourning clothes.

" _The manor and I represent to the Wizarding public remnants of a past best put away. I wish my son to have a clean slate to draw his life, and my wife to be spared the notoriety of being my spouse. The entirety of my fortune is to be managed by Minerva McGonagall and those she appoints such that the wealth aids in supporting the education and careers of young boys and girls who grow up orphaned, or worse, abused. I wish the trust to be named in memory of my late father, who had a penchant for taking in strays others would not touch with a six-foot pole."_

* * *

Minerva is on her way to inebriation when an owl swoops in and drops a parcel on her lap. She fumbles with the twine and manages to open it only to find a fine tartan dressing gown stitched with great attention to detail. A note falls from the fabric. She picks it up, finds an unfamiliar script with the words, _"Giving you flowers or jewellery would make you mock me. Yet, to acknowledge the loveliest of trysts, accept from me this token of affection."_

The pompous braggart, she reflects. Loveliest of trysts, indeed! He must have been insane. It explains his fatal pyrotechnics.

"How are you holding up?" Harry asks later that evening.

"As well as a woman can be after discovering she is such a failure at sex that she drives her partner to suicide by self-immolation," she says.

Harry snorts and pours her another glass of brandy. When she begins softly crying, he gathers her to him and lets her snivel on his fine robes.

* * *

Though Harry is so very young, Minerva knows that he will likely not outlive her. His eyes are haunted and his war-wounds bitter in the cold winters. They fumble along, birds in a cage, draining energy from each other.

Minerva laughs at herself when she looks at the mirror. Look at her, really. The only men she had slept with had been a former teacher and a former student. And folks had touted her as the wisest of her generation.

Sometimes, in the dark of the nights, she will creep to Albus's portrait, clad in the tartan dressing gown gifted to her by a madman on the very day he had decided to do away with his life in the most dramatic manner, and pull away the drapes. She stares into the darkness, both relieved and disappointed when her failing eyes cannot pinpoint a twinkling blue gaze.

Often, she Apparates to the Malfoy estate, which is now a vine-infested jungle and a veritable death-trap what with old Dark curses and wards still active in many parts lurking to gobble the unwary trespasser. She picks her way through the landmines and reaches the eastern border where there is a desolate copse of trees standing guard over a wild spread of bluebells.

She looks at the carpet of flowers and thinks about the men buried underneath that spread, lying cold and forgotten in unmarked graves. She thinks about a man entombed in white stone by a lakeshore. She thinks about e. e. cummings and the madmen who made her.

To the wild bluebells and to the cold, white stone, she whispers, "How do you like your blue-eyed boys, Mister Death?"

* * *

External source text:

 _How do you like your blue-eyed boys, Mister Death?_ – from a poem 'Buffalo Bill's' by e. e. cummings.

 _I'd rather from one bird learn how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance._ – from a poem 'you shall above be all things glad and young' by e. e. cummings.

 _and when he's plucked such mysteries as men do not conceive_ – from a poem 'How many moments must' by e. e. cummings.

**_It sort of forms the ending to the whole Eldritch plot, in the actual timeline, I think. Not very sure how much it works, since I can't quite seem to keep everything straight in my own head and I feel sorry for inflicting it on you. All the same, if you have reached the end here, thank you, and you are brave!_ **


End file.
